Pagan poetry Forum Pagans
Pagans8 Years AgoPaganism
is the ancestral religion of the whole of humanity. This ancient
religious outlook remains active throughout much of the world today,
both in complex civilisations such as Japan and India, and in less
complex tribal societies world-wide. It was the outlook of the European
religions of classical antiquity - Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome - as
well as of their "barbarian" neighbours on the northern fringes, and its
European form is re-emerging into explicit awareness in the modern West
as the articulation of urgent contemporary religious priorities.
The Pagan outlook can be seen as threefold. Its adherents venerate Nature and worship many deities, both goddesses and gods.
Nature - Veneration
The spirit of place is recognised in Pagan religion, whether as a
personified natural feature such as a mountain, lake or spring, or as a
fully articulated guardian divinity such as, for example, Athena, the
goddess of Athens. The cycle of the natural year, with the different
emphasis brought by its different seasons, is seen by most Pagans as a
model of spiritual growth and renewal, and as a sequence marked by
festivals which offer access to different divinities according to their
affinity with different times of year. Many Pagans see the Earth itself
as sacred: in ancient Greece the Earth was always offered the first
libation of wine, although She had no priesthood and no temple.
Polytheism: Pluralism and Diversity
The many deities of Paganism are a recognition of the diversity of
Nature. Some Pagans see the goddesses and gods as a community of
individuals much like the diverse human community in this world. Others,
such as followers of Isis and Osiris from ancient times onwards, and
Wiccan-based Pagans in the modern world, see all the goddesses as one
Great Goddess, and all the gods as one Great God, whose harmonious
interaction is the secret of the universe. Yet others think there is a
supreme divine principle, that "both wants and does not want to be
called Zeus", as Heraclitus wrote in the fifth century BCE, or which is
the Great Goddess Mother of All Things, as Isis was to the first century
CE novelist Apuleius and the Great Goddess is to many Western Pagans
nowadays. Yet others, such as the Emperor Julian, the great restorer of
Paganism in Christian antiquity, and many Hindu mystics nowadays,
believe in an abstract Supreme Principle, the origin and source of all
things. But even these last Pagans recognise that other spiritual
beings, although perhaps one in essence with a greater being, are
themselves divine, and are not false or partial divinities. Pagans who
worship the One are described as henotheists, believers in a supreme
divine principle, rather than monotheists, believers in one true deity
beside which all other deities are false.
The Goddess
Pagan religions all recognise the feminine face of divinity. A
religion without goddesses can hardly be classified as Pagan. Some Pagan
paths, such as the cult of Odin or of Mithras, offer exclusive
allegiance to one male god. But they do not deny the reality of other
gods and goddesses, as monotheists do. (The word 'cult' has always meant
the specialised veneration of one particular deity or pantheon, and has
only recently been extended to mean the worship of a deified or
semi-divine human leader.) By contrast, non-Pagan religions, such as
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, often abhor the very idea of female
divinity. The (then) Anglican Bishop of London even said a few years ago
that religions with goddesses were 'degenerate'!
Other Characteristics
The many divinities of Pagan religion often include ancestral
deities. The Anglo-Saxon royal houses of England traced their ancestry
back to a god, usually Woden, and the Celtic kings of Cumbria traced
their descent from the god Beli and the goddess Anna. Local and national
heroes and heroines may be deified, as was Julius Caesar, and in all
Pagan societies the deities of the household are venerated. These may
include revered ancestors and, for a while, the newly dead, who may of
may not choose to leave the world of the living for good. They may
include local spirits of place, either as personified individuals such
as the spirit of a spring or the house's guardian toad or snake, or as
group spirits such as Elves in England, the Little People in Ireland,
Kobolds in Germany, Barstuccae in Lithuania, Lares and Penates in
ancient Rome, and so on. A household shrine focuses the cult of these
deities, and there is usually an annual ritual to honour them. The
spirit of the hearth is often venerated, sometimes with a daily offering
of food and drink, sometimes with an annual ritual of extinguishing and
relighting the fire. Through ancestral and domestic ritual a spirit of
continuity is preserved, and by the transmission of characteristics and
purposes from the past, the future is assured of meaning.
So, not all Pagan religion is public religion; much is domestic.
And not all Pagan deities are humanoid super-persons; many are elemental
or collective. We are looking at a religion which pervades the whole of
everyday life.
One consequence of the veneration of Nature, the outlook which sees
Nature as a manifestation of divinity rather than as a neutral or
inanimate object, is that divination and magic are accepted parts of
life. Augury, divination by interpreting the flight of birds, was
widespread in the ancient world and is in modern Pagan societies, as is
extispicy, divination by reading the entrails of the sacrificed animal,
itself a larger scale version of divination by reading the tea-leaves
left in a teacup. As well as reading the signs already given by deities,
diviners may also actively ask the universe to send a sign, e.g., by
casting stones to read the geomantic patterns into which they fall, by
casting runes or the yarrow stalks of the I Ching. Pagans usually
believe that the divine world will answer a genuine request for
information. Trance seership and mediumship are also used to communicate
with the Otherworld.
Magic, the deliberate production of results in this world by
Otherworld means, is generally accepted as a feasible activity in Pagan
societies, since the two worlds are thought to be in constant
communication. In ancient Rome a new bride would ceremonially anoint the
doorposts of her new home with wolf's fat to keep famine from the
household, and her new-born child would be given a consecrated amulet to
wear as a protection against harmful spirits. The Norse warriors of the
Viking age would cast the magical 'war fetter' upon their enemies to
paralyse them, and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts record spells to bring
healing and fertility. Specialist magical technologists such as
horse-whisperers and healers are common throughout Pagan societies, but
often the practice of magic for unfair personal gain or for harm to
another is forbidden, exactly as physical extortion and assault are
forbidden everywhere.
Modern Paganism
With its respect for plurality, the refusal to judge other ways of
life as wrong simply because they are different from one's own, with its
veneration of a natural (and supernatural) world from which Westerners
in the age of technology have become increasingly isolated, and with its
respect for women and the feminine principle as embodied in the many
goddesses of the various pantheons, Paganism has much to offer people of
European background today. Hence it is being taken up by them in
droves. When they realise that it is in fact their ancestral heritage,
its attraction grows. Democracy, for example, was pioneered by the
ancient Athenians and much later reinvented by the Pagan colonisers of
Iceland, home of Europe's oldest parliament. Our modern love of the arts
was fostered in Pagan antiquity, with its pageants and its temples, but
had no place in iconoclastic Christianity and Islam. The development of
science as we know it began in the desire of the Greeks and Babylonians
to understand the hidden patterns of Nature, and the cultivation of
humane urbanity, the ideal of the well-rounded, cultured personality,
was imported by Renaissance thinkers from the writings of Cicero. In the
Pagan cities of the Mediterranean lands the countryside was never far
from people's awareness, with parks, gardens and even zoos, all
re-introduced into modern Europe, not by the religions of the Book, and
not by utilitarian atheists, but by the Classically-inspired planners of
the Enlightenment.
In the present day, the Pagan tradition manifests both as communities
reclaiming their ancient sites and ceremonies (especially in Eastern
Europe), to put humankind back in harmony with the Earth, and as
individuals pursuing a personal spiritual path alone or in a small group
(especially in Western Europe and the European-settled countries
abroad), under the tutelage of one of the Pagan divinities. To most
modern Pgans in the West, the whole of life is to be affirmed joyfully
and without shame, as long as other people are not harmed by one's own
tastes. Modern Pagans tend to be relaxed and at ease with themselves and
others, and women in particular have a dignity which is not always
found outside Pagan circles.
Modern Pagans, not tied down either by the customs of an established
religion or by the dogmas of a revealed one, are often creative, playful
and individualistic, affirming the importance of the individual psyche
as it interfaces with a greater power. There is a respect for all of
life and usually a desire to participate with rather than to dominate
other beings. What playwright Eugene O'Neil called "the creative Pagan
acceptance of life" is at the forefront of the modern movement. This is
bringing something new to religious life and to social behaviour, a way
of pluralism without fragmentation, of creativity without anarchy. Here
is an age-old current surfacing in a new form suited to the needs of the
present day.
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